11th July 2018, 10:06 PM
Weltall Wrote:I wish I could be optimistic about the Democrats' chances this fall, but I really do think people on the left are overestimating how much electoral value they will get out of not being Donald Trump's party,I think that the Democrats will definitely get a lot more votes for both House and Senate than the Republicans. They will also definitely gain seats in the House, and probably will gain a lot of seats. Meanwhile, because of the incredibly bad map, Democrats will probably end up down a seat or two in the Senate, and that's if things go well. It'd be incredible if we end up at 49 or even 50 seats, and I very much hope it happens, but that will be pretty unlikely.
For the House particularly, the hard question is if all of the momentum and energy will be enough to overcome the Republicans' gerrymandered and built-in advantages, and that's a question nobody will know until after the election. There's a good chance the Dems take the House though and that would be fantastic. All it takes is people actually going out there and voting, and so far people have been doing that...
Quote:and even if they aren't, it's still the same old party run by the same old habitual losers.I can't deny this though, yeah. The Democrats are very good at giving in and not really trying to win, that's for sure... it gives Republicans some big advantages. It is a solvable problem, but not easily -- after all, part of the issue is that Dems actually still believe in government, so doing Republican-style actions to blow up the system for purely partisan gain are much harder to get people to do...
Dark Jaguar Wrote:I'm already hearing rumblings of democratic house members in red states "pushed" to vote for trump's candidate so they don't lose. Which, of course, will make them lose because they are betraying their base to cater to a group that hates them.
I don't think so, in states like West Virginia the only way to win is to get a LOT of Trump voters to vote for the Democratic Senate candidate. They will definitely have a hard choice to make or Kavanaugh; on the one hand he's horrible on a lot of fronts, including presidential power (when the President is a Republican anyway), voting rights, abortion, etc, etc, but on the other hand he isn't a Trump-style crazy, he's a traditional conservative judge. Also some of the red-state Democrats voted for Trump's last nominee, so this one will probably get some votes also.
Anyway, the only case where it actually matters how they vote is one where two Republicans are going to vote with the Democrats to defeat Kavanaugh. If the Dems thing they've somehow actually flipped two Republicans, absolutely, push all the red-state Dems as hard as possible to vote against him! But with the way the Republicans are talking that sounds unlikely, so pressing red state Democrats to make a tough vote that won't actually stop the nomination probably doesn't make sense. When you know how the vote is going to go votes are sometimes about strategy, not only what people think on the issues...